St. Petersburg’s Microcosmos, as the name might suggest, is much more than a label. It is a community of impressive size, whose core mission is the staging of chillout, downtempo, and ambient performances. These take place both in urban settings and in the great Russian outdoors, where nature’s unhurried operations offer a fecund, yet suitably hushed backdrop.

One recent and representative recording from Microcosmos is shown here; a compilation involving two FFM artists, Aedem and Astronaut Ape. On prior occasions, the former artist has promised listeners "an unforgettable psychedelic trip. It'll be beautiful, mysterious, and exciting. Take a journey through finely interwoven sound-structures... to the inner depths of your soul." That melodramatic turn of phrase - again with recourse to metaphors of depth or profundity - at least speaks to the zeal with which departure is sought. Peace, calm, and some form of "profound" insight are all lacking in quotidian experience. The daily grind is a paltry realm indeed.

The latter artist (Oleg Belousev) even dresses an an astronaut on stage, bringing these cosmic fantasies closer to reality.

The Siberian figure known simply as Yuka is something of a legend in Russian techno. What remains surprising, therefore, is that she spends relatively little time in Russia itself. A woman whose career forms a soundtrack to post-socialist industry would rather be in India. Why the growing disconnect?

Firstly, Yuka's hometown of Bratsk - a local industrial center - is probably more famous for what it dumps than what it makes; in the recent past it was listed as one of the thirty most polluted cities in the world. The political climates of Moscow and St. Petersburg do not improve matters. And so she writes this month:

“No! None of this is for me... Life within a state, within a system. Life at work or inside an apartment. None of it. I suffocate inside that vicious circle. Sometimes even music won’t help. I need the hills, the forest, the ocean..! I’m a savage at heart. I simply don’t like civilization, which lets one person persecute another. Everybody suffers within ‘civilization.’ Borders, visas, dividing lines, conflict, and terror. I don’t see how technological progress makes us any happier.”

Indian nature is a quieter, more peaceful and productive form of industry.

These common desires for peace and quiet are extended in the newest work of Doyeq: Sergei Kulikov (aka Sergey Tutty) and Vitaly Bragin ("Noname"). By way of quick illustration, one German magazine recently reported: "Doyeq's dub techno tracks float effortlessly between techno and house registers. Their vastness and abundance seem almost endless. These compositions are perfect for a morning spent dreaming... or for simply going with the flow."

“His piano and synthesizer melodies move as gently, and seemingly without purpose, as a mobile in still air. Simultaneously wistful and beatific, everything is emotionally open-ended, and it makes for an ideal mood-enhancer, at least for the listener in a reflective headspace. If only any airport on earth were like this; the image it evokes—of patient, optimistic travelers gliding soundlessly along moving walkways while sun falls across gleaming surfaces of aluminum and glass—seems unlikely to be made real in our lifetimes.”

From the fading echo of Soviet factories to Indian beaches or a psychedelic trip, desire acknowledges its “unlikely” relationship with reality. Dreams are unlikely to come true. No matter how quiet things get.

Were one obliged to conduct an (ultimately pointless) argument over the finest label in Eastern Europe, a prime contender would nonetheless emerge from the streets of Kiev: Kvitnu. Founded eleven years ago by Dmytro Fedorenko, Kvitnu was designed from the outset both "to amplify experimental noises emanating from Ukraine and to discover new sonic variations upon music –coming from the 'world outside.'"

Within that initial self-statement was some quintessentially physical phrasing that has continued to define Kvitnu more than any subsequent language. The label spoke of "high blood pressure inside its sound-veins," themselves packaged within a "cardboard" body. A great deal was held together by very little. A tiny body housed a tempestuous noise.

That same marriage of natural imagery and unnatural pressure colors a brand-new track called "Cicada" from Fedorenko, who performs on stage as "Kotra." A swarming insect that hibernates for years and then - with much noise and speed - both reproduces and satisfies its predators' desires (i.e., lives and dies simultaneously) symbolizes eleven years of infrequent thunder from Kvitnu. Fragile bodies are sometimes home to significant violence, be it audible or otherwise.

Although originating in ancient Greece, the term "oligarch" is today most associated with the robber-barons of post-Soviet industry. The Saint-Petersburg bass music collective Oligarkh has spent the last few years playing with a related double entendre. They merge an ancient tradition - that of Slavic folklore - with dance-floor fashions recognizable across modern Europe, if not further.

Yesterday we wrote that Oligarkh had been working with Moscow's Pixelord, but the track "Voi" (Вой / Howl) bears a special mention. Stylized as pre-modern rural performance, the opening, underlying couplets are actually from the pen (in 1921) of Velimir Khlebnikov. A key figure in twentieth-century Russian avant garde poetry, Khlebnikov used dizzying - often incomprehensible - borrowings from Slavic mythology to speak of the coming Revolution and its historically fated or transformative powers. For medical reasons that remain unclear to this day, Khlebnikov died at the age of 36. He never saw the future.

With tragic references to a domestic past, Oligarkh and Pixelord sidestep any chocolate-box, "folkloric traditions" on the Soviet stage. Prior decades and centuries are mourned, mocked, and celebrated - all at once.

The name of Bisamratta belongs to Vladimir Luchansky, who was raised in Novosibirsk. Now a resident of St. Petersburg, he remains an important name in Siberia's lo-fi scene. With layered field recordings, muffled soundscapes, dilapidated hardware, and a penchant for retrospection, Bisamratta and his colleagues at Echotourist together represent what one might even call Siberian psychedelia.

There are no drugs in sight; instead incomprehensible distance and social fantasy combine to fashion a world that Western listeners could never imagine. A world of forests, concrete, and solitude.

The kind of place where post-industrial field recordings and fir trees would indeed predominate. And where a disarmingly simple title like "When Loves Holds Your Heart" becomes a long, involved consideration of absence.

The Baltic folk singer and multi-instrumentalist Mari Kalkun is from Viitina in southern Estonia. On her Soundcloud account she currently lists her location as "Võro," being less of a fixed locale and more of an ethnic or regional identity. In other words, she defines herself in terms of tradition and landscape. A brand-new single has just been published, called "Mõtsavele mäng" or "A Game of Forest Brothers." Likewise, the recording below is a teaser for a forthcoming album entitled "Ilmamõtsan" or "In the Wood of the World."

Modern-day kinship and a national heritage; local woods and a sprawling world. Experiences both private and public are folded into an imaginary space, one that survives in a rustic corner of Estonia, far from the clamorous workings of modern industry. And so - as a sonic expression of that ideal - everything here is very quiet indeed.